What cable channel has suffered the most from network decay?

[FriarTed]

MTV & A&E are the worst offenders, of course. AMC next as it really stands for Assaulting Movies with Commercials. At least SyFy is mostly SciFi… BAD SciFi but still SciFi. I’d love to see a ClassicSyFy that played Ray Bradbury Theater, old eps of SciFi Buzz, MST3K (the whole run), Dr. Ruehl’s Mysteries from Beyond the Outer Dominion (was that it?), & the “Classic Science Fiction & Horror” that it first headlined.

I miss Night Tracks, Commander USA’s Saturday afternoon movies, & USA Up All Night (w/Rhonda Shearer).

[Winnie]

@Baracus

While flipping through the channels in the evening, once in a while I would stop at “FitTV” and they would have an interesting general health or cooking show on, in addition to numerous exercise shows. It appears that their afternoon and evening programming has all been replaced by the remains of the now defunct Discovery Health channel - the medical examiner show, the adoption show, the “little people” show, the “didn’t know I was pregnant” show, etc.

This happened about 2 weeks ago when OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) took over Discovery Health. They literally shifted the entire daytime lineup of Discovery Health over to FitTV. Very disappointing. It was so nice to have a good variety of 1/2 hour and 1 hour exercise programs throughout the day plus some really good wellness and health shows.

[Lamia]

@Infovore

I’m not sure it quite qualifies, but Nickelodeon (Nick at Nite) used to show old classic TV shows. Not stuff that finished its run 5 years ago, but sitcoms from the 50s and 60s, old game shows, and stuff like that. Now all they seem to show is B-list comedies and made for cable crud.

@Joey_P

All that stuff got shuffled over to MeTV.
Except for Twilight Zone (and maybe Alfred Hitchcock Presents) which I think is on SyFy.

Back in '96 Nick launched TV Land, which was supposed to be entirely “classic TV”, so most of that stuff was removed from Nick at Night. I get TV Land now, and while it does show things from the '60s and '70s like I Dream of Jeannie, MASH*, The Andy Griffith Show, and All in the Family, it’s also frequently running more recent shows like Everybody Loves Raymond (which ended in 2005) and now has a couple of original sitcoms too. The Wikipedia article gives more detail about their shift in programming. Compared to some of the other examples in this thread, TV Land hasn’t decayed all that much though.

[Tangent]

I second TLC and SyFy.

[K364]

Certainly it’s gotta be TLC.

[Oakminster]

The History Channel is the one that matters most to me. Whole lotta crap on there that lacks even a little bit of history value. Yeah, I like Pawn Stars, but now they’ve launched a spinoff featuring the guy that does a lot of the restoration work.

[2ply]

@Gestalt

What’s the point of these shows? So the rest of us can watch and feel superior?

Yes. It’s the Jerry Springer Principle.

[Terraplane]

@joebuck20

Anyway, MTV and VH1 are the obvious examples, networks that were founded primarily as vehicles for music videos, but now exist mainly as platforms for D-list celebs to peddle their reality shows.

I think MTV is probably the best example you’re likely to find. They’ve shifted completely. Even some of the TLC stuff at least has some pathetic claim to educate or inform. MTV has so little music at this point that they really ought to find a new name.

@Airman_Doors_USAF

MTV and AMC. Black Dog is NOT a classic. Neither is original programming. And the music on MTV has long been little more than incidental.

I know that AMC has left their origins, but they’re one channel that I think has done so for the better. Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, these shows wouldn’t exist if AMC hadn’t altered their focus and I’d give up a lot of classic movie reruns that I could find elsewhere for them.

@It_s_Not_Rocket_Surgery

XM/Sirius satellite radio is obviously not a TV network, but this has definitely happened to them! ALL four of my favorite channels (Beyond Jazz, XM Music Lab, Fine Tuning, and Special X) were eliminated over the last few years, in favor of stations that are closer to the crappy broadcast radio format. Feh.

It was when Sirius bought out XM. I used to love that service because it let you hear things you would likely have never heard before. Now (or at least when I cancelled a couple years ago) it’s just the most popular songs of whatever genre, played every single day. The obscure stuff is gone. Sure there was bad stuff, but the gems you’d hear that you wouldn’t have heard otherwise were more than worth it. I found more new cool stuff under XM than I’d ever found before.

[Irishman]

@joebuck20

I seem to recall that Spike TV started out as The Nashville Network, showing a lot of country music programming.

@Odesio

I will give them a pass because they made a specific decision to change their format and made no bones about it. TNN started out as The Nashville Network, became The Nation’s Network, and finally settled on Spike. I don’t think that’s the same as network decay.

Agreed. They deliberately changed the format and marketing of the channel, and clearly announced the change. Most of the other examples are where the channel quietly changed their content for whatever reason but kept the same moniker as if they hadn’t really rebranded.

SyFy was incorporating wrestling before they changed their moniker.

@Gestalt

So, I saw an ad today for an A&E show about super morbidly obese people who were going to get skinnier somehow. There were just so many shots that were just images of people’s naked fat tissue. Like, just rolls and rolls of fat.

And it made me think about how many shows on tv today that we have that are just basically freakshows…

What’s the point of these shows? So the rest of us can watch and feel superior? At least the latter category can sometimes be interesting because it’s not really about the strangeness of the people themselves but more like weird random situations, but sometimes watching the first two categories of shows seem to be like rubbernecking at car wrecks.

It’s the circus freakshow, now in your living room.

[ExTank]

@Airman_Doors_USAF

MTV and AMC. Black Dog is NOT a classic. Neither is original programming. And the music on MTV has long been little more than incidental.

@Terraplane

I know that AMC has left their origins, but they’re one channel that I think has done so for the better. Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, these shows wouldn’t exist if AMC hadn’t altered their focus and I’d give up a lot of classic movie reruns that I could find elsewhere for them.

Agreed wholeheartedly. Definitely “change for the better” IMO.

@Odesio

F/X started out as a channel with a lot of wholesome family reruns and plenty of live shows starting in the morning and going on through the afternoon. I remember when the network went live and it was kind of neat. The same network got rid of the live aspect of their programming and got rid of the wholesome stuff. They gave us The Shield so they’re okay in my book.

As well as Rescue Me, Damages, Justified, Sons of Anarchy, Terriers, Archer, and now Lights Out.

Like AMC’s original programming, I see this as a positive trend. I prefer “gritty” and “adult humor” over “family treacle.” Not saying that there isn’t a place for “wholesome family reruns,” just that I’m not looking for them.

[Student_Driver]

@SpartanDC

All of the above are great choices, but I think ABC Family deserves an honorable mention. One of their shows, “Pretty Little Liars,” might as well be titled “Gossip Girl - Jailbait Edition” and then there’s “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” which is the worst written, worst acted show about minors having sex (for example, their term for “having sex” is… “having sex”) that you could possibly imagine. ABC Family used to be The Family Channel, which was actually owned by a Christian organization. Things changed, a lot, once it got into the Mouse’s hands.

No one else seemed to notice this one, so I thought I’d second your nomination, although I think the fact that the network changed openly, because as Odesio argues, openly announcing format changes is a bit different than the “Decay” that slowly transforms a network from one focus to another.

But.

ABC Family started as the free big-dish satellite version of the Christian Broadcasting Network. The 700 Club, Pat Robertson and other preachers. SuperBook and The Flying House for the kids, puppet ministers for the families, and gospel singers for evening entertainment. Then, it began to focus on family-friendly fare, downplaying most of the overtly religious programming. Eventually, it became The Family Channel.

The Family Channel didn’t attract too many kids-- mainly parents and grandparents-- and they began to court kids by scheduling cartoons and kid’s shows. Eventually, they were scheduling a lot of programs from Haim Saban (entrepreneur best known for bringing the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers to the US), and Saban Entertainment engineered a sale to Fox, of all companies, uniting Saban and the channel. The channel became Fox Family, showing S Club 7 (featuring a few singers known for posing for lad’s mags), the Fox cartoons (which were known at the time for being edgy), major league sports, reruns of Fox live-action shows, Fox movies, and special Halloween broadcasts featuring “occult” pop-culture figures (think Casper, et al.) that were roundly denounced by Pat Robertson and the still-existing Christian Broadcasting Network.

Saban and Fox clashed, which is one of the events that spurred the sale to Disney, who then rebranded the channel as ABC Family, which now seems to be the teen upgrade to the Disney Channel-- still showing family-friendly material, but with an emphasis on appeals to teen tastes.

Oh, and because of legacy contractual stipulations, they still have to show The 700 Club and Pat Robertson’s political harangues, obviously holding their nose as they do bumpers before and after the shows making sure that viewers know that the 700 Club doesn’t reflect the channel owner’s actual views. Which is good, since Mr. Robertson not only makes controversial political and religious statements… he’s made disparaging remarks about the channel itself, decrying the “network decay” which has turned viewers away from Christianity and to secular entertainment.

So… the format has changed a bit over the years, but the change is such that the founder complains about the network decay on the network itself! MTV might be the most obvious candidate for network decay, but in ABC Family we actually have the founder continuing to hang around to remind everyone that the channel isn’t what it was founded to be. To go from all-preachers-all-the-time, to Hallmark-lite, to edgy Fox Jr., to Disney’s angsty teen channel has got to make Mr. Robertson’s head spin.

[Freudian_Slit]

Wasn’t ABC Family at one point called Fox Family?

[TBG]

@Freudian_Slit

Wasn’t ABC Family at one point called Fox Family?

Yes, and ABC wanted to rename it XYZ, but the same contractual issues that bind them to airing 700 Club mandate they keep the word “Family” in the title.

[etv78]

@TBG

Yes, and ABC wanted to rename it XYZ, but the same contractual issues that bind them to airing 700 Club mandate they keep the word “Family” in the title.

Why can’t they pay Robertson to go away?

[Eyebrows_0f_Doom]

I always forget that SyFy is even *supposed *to be a science fiction channel, as every time I see their new name I can’t help but read it as “siffy.”

[alphaboi867]

@Eyebrows_0f_Doom

I always forget that SyFy is even *supposed *to be a science fiction channel, as every time I see their new name I can’t help but read it as “siffy.”

I like to call it “The Syphilis Network”. Of course there’s also no longer anything on it I watch.

[Meeko]

I loved XM when I first had it.

Then, Special X went, Most of the TV on XM channels went, then The System [XM 82, Electronica / Trance] went.

Thankfully, this was right about the time my year with them was up [I even got my parents hooked on XM] and I was fed up that THE 3 channels I liked left. I asked about the channels, and the Operator stubbornly suggested remaining channels. BPM is good but it’s no The System. Sirius’ answer to BPM was AREA XX [They changed numbers how many times?!]

Does Sirius still have the Old Time Radio Dramas / Radio Theater ?

---

MTV gets the obvious and permanent win for this discussion, but History channel seems under-represented in this debate. One wonders how many slogans they went through to end up at “History Made Every Day” … And I’m willing to be a few high ups still don’t like that one.

G4 ? Yeah, well DirecTV dropped it, and for good reason. My standard joke for G4 Is "It’s a Channel that is so into tech, it currently uses the tag line ‘TV that’s Plugged In’ – As if the current generation even knows what a Wire is, much less a Plug.

I would so love for Tech TV to come back. I fantasize that it will, under the name " RebooT" with the TechTV " T " , reversed for the T.

But, I think Revision 3 / Diggnation and TWIT are good enough without. – Now, if just Leporte and Rose could combine.

Cartoon Network, or are they " CN " now ? I can’t believe that The spots say Cartoon network and Live action, in the same breath.

My Mom still complains that **Food **“had” to make Cooking channel. She also complains about HGTV and DIY.

Does Discovery Wings / Millitary Channel / History International have enough of a following to even be debated here ?

GSN (Game Show Network) seems to be … in a different direction currently

I personally havent had any Pay Tv [Cable or Sattelite] for over a year now. Broadcast, Netflix and Internet suffice.

I caught Ovation on my Parents TV over the Holidays … I wish I could watch more of it. It seems to be a Good channel ((Which means it’s doomed.))

Someone upthread mentioned " MeTV " Is this the name of that network? Where can I find more info?

[Meeko]

Knew I missed one :

SyFy : I re-read the reason why they changed names recently. They changed their name to distinguish between their own programing, and the generic genre. I can accept this excuse, but I don’t have to approve of it.

But, Even if it was still SciFi, we would still allow them Xena and Hercules and the like, correct? I don’t think SciFi having Medieval and or Witches and Spellcraft quite counts as network decay. [Another reason to get the Sci out of SyFy]

But yeah, SyFy still has WWE wrestling?! Yeah, this brings them decay with the quickness.

I still find it funny, to this day: Scifi used to have " if " spots and bumpers, where something … strange would happen. the rest of the letters would be taken away, leaving a " if ". The implication being, anything is possible, … if.

Yeah, you could have given me a million guesses on what COULD have happened and I never would have thought that the iconic spots would themselves get axed. [Who shoots themselves in the foot THAT much ? ]

[antonio107]

The Gameshow Network made the unfortunate decision to start showing poker and dating shows. And doesn’t the outdoor life network broadcast NHL games in the states? Clearly someone missed the irony on that deal.

[Meeko]

One Outdoor Channel changed over to VSdidn’t they?

FTR: Family was FOX Family for a month or so. IIRC.